Everything's Coming Together

This past week was another big training week for me, with both my longest bike ride ever and my biggest week in terms of overall hours. More impressive than the hours put in is how great each individual workout was. I feel like all of the hard work I've been doing is finally starting to show and I couldn't be happier about it, especially with my next race just around the corner. Here's how the week played out:

Monday: 2800 yd swim

Strength

~19 mile easy bike in the rain with the Gung Ho beginner ride

Tuesday: 2000 yd swim

60 min yoga

7 miles track (15 min w/u, 10 x 400, 15 min w/d)

Wednesday: 3 mile recovery run

15 min abs

Thursday: much appreciated rest day

Friday: 3200 yd swim

Strength

5 mile run with negative splits (9:35, 8:57, 8:44, 8:43, 8:34)

Saturday: 42 miles bike @ 15.8 avg

Sunday: 6.61 mile run with negative splits (9:54, 9:12, 9:07, 8:51, 8:43, 8:31, w/d)

Both Monday and Friday's swims were really strong and huge confidence boosters. I've talked about it before but I have a pretty strained relationship with swimming and am often scared of really pushing myself because I know no matter how hard I train I will never see the speeds I did when I was competing. This week I was able to put these thoughts aside and really make some progress in the pool. I'm also starting to chase some of my former training times, all in good spirit. I know I won't get back to where I was but it's fun to see how close I can get.

My long ride this week was my longest ride ever and was very enjoyable. After last weekend's super hilly ride I chose something a little flatter but with some climbs mixed in. My legs were not feeling any of the hills but felt great on the flats. I was hoping to do this ride a bit faster but my main goal was to keep the pace steady and that's what I did so I'm calling this a success. I also came up on what looked to be a pretty bad biking accident. I couldn't see how bad it was but the guy was rushed off in an ambulance. Really hoping to hear some good news.

This week's runs were the best workouts of the week. While the goal of Tuesday's track workout was more about consistency than speed I was happy to see how easy it felt to hold a sub 9:00 pace the whole time (including warm up & warm down). The real magic happened on Friday and Sunday's runs though. I wasn't expecting much out of either run since most of my runs this summer have been less than stellar. Instead I surprised myself by starting off slow and descending down to 8:30 with relative ease. Strong yet relaxed.

This week certainly left me with a lot of confidence in the work I've been putting in heading into my next race. I'm fairly clueless about what I'll be able to do given the course and the insane humidity in Virginia but I know that I did the work. Could I have done more? Yes, such as longer runs, but I was being cautious with my hip and regardless I did what I could with what I was given. Now it's time to relax and enjoy a lighter week because Saturday is race day!